


Cat's in the Cradle

by Silex



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Infected Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9360455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: William Birkin's last thoughts as he deals with success, failure and not having succeed in being the man he should have been.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherrytruck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrytruck/gifts).



> Written because of that song and also because cherrytruck has been spree-writing Birkin-centric fics and I've been meaning to do so for the longest time.

_And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon_  
_Little boy blue and the man in the moon_  
_"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when_  
_But we'll get together then_  
_You know we'll have a good time then."_

- _Cat's in the Cradle_ , Lyrics by Harry Chapin

 

He’d finished it, just in time or too little too late. Annette had said that she would return to assist him, but it was too late for that. Too late for so many things. The G-virus was done, or as done as possible considering the circumstances. Further refinement would be necessary, but it was, again, too late. Perfect cellular regeneration, revitalization, it could do all that, but it was too unstable. Inject it into an organism and it would alter them, allow them to survive and recover from injuries that should have been fatal, but the virus took on a life of its own as a parasite and that parasitic stage was unstable, short lived and useless as a B.O.W.

Initially he’d thought to compare it to barnacles of the genus _Sacculina_ , but that wasn’t entirely accurate. If the resultant G-virus organism resembled anything in its behavior it was similar to the gametophyte stage of certain algae and ferns in that it was an intermediate form that existed for a singular purpose, reproduction. Again the comparison didn’t hold true, but it worked to describe what was created.

Perhaps the reality lay somewhere between the two. A parasite that would overtake the host, allow the G-virus to mutate and adapt to it, and then…

Annette wasn’t going to make it back in time. The bullets had perforated a lung. He could feel it growing increasingly difficult to breathe.

It was too late for him. Without proper medical attention he would die and with all the compounding variables there was no chance for it. Annette would be able to keep him alive that much longer, but her actions would only be prolonging the inevitable.

Unless one of those confounding variables, the men who had attacked him, stolen his life’s work managed to find her. He was dead, there was no purpose in pretending otherwise, but Annette was alive and so was Sherry. If they found her that wouldn’t be the case.

And then what would become of Sherry? He had neglected her so badly recently. They both had.

On the verge of a breakthrough he and Annette had ignored her. Later there would be time, that was what they had told themselves, when everything was done and they were so close to success. That was what he’d convinced Annette, later they could make up for everything. Later.

Later, later, later, there would always be time to be a better father later.

A better husband, because wasn’t he the one who pulled Annette into his own work when she had projects of her own to worry about? They’d agreed there would be more time later.

Except there wasn’t.

No time for him at least.

And if the mercenaries who had been hired to take the G-virus found her there wouldn’t be time for Annette either.

Or Sherry.

When the duration of what constituted as later was measured in minutes some decisions were far too easy to make.

 

Injecting oneself with an unstable viral strain didn’t seem like a terribly foolish idea when there was nothing left to lose.

Or everything left to lose, depending on how one looked at it.

If he survived long enough for the virus to take hold and begin the regeneration process he could find the men who had attacked him, deal with them so that Annette could escape and take Sherry to safety.

Annette would understand, and later, when Sherry was older she would understand as well. Because there would be a later for both of them.

It was too late for him. He was able to accept that on a rational, intellectual level, even as his dying body struggled against the inevitable. Death would come later, rather than sooner, still it would come. There it was again, later.

It was never too late to learn, especially unpleasant lessons.

He had believed that there was a limit to the amount of pain one could feel, that there existed a saturation point after which nothing new could be perceived.

And there might have been, but he discovered that he was mistaken in believing that being shot multiple times was sufficient to reach that threshold.

Injecting himself with the G-virus was a whole new level of agony, one that blotted out all reason, narrowing the world to a pinpoint of suffering and white light.

That was where he existed, a single instant of anguish on all levels.

Perhaps this was death, in which case it meant failure, utter failure.

It should have come as a surprise though, the G-virus though perfect and complete, still required refining, but not of the sort that could take place in vitro.

The final stage, the period of mutation and adaptation had to take place in vivo. The virus would adapt to the host organism, and the host organism would adapt to suit the purpose of the virus at that stage.

The final strain, the one adapted to the host organism would destroy the primary host, rendering it little more than vessel for spreading, a catastrophic reproductive event looking for a suitable subject. If it found one, an organism possessing sufficient similarity on a genetic level, the organism would be infected and the true glory of the G-virus would be realized. In an instance of artificially created aggressive symbiosis the adapted strain would join with the new host and, rather than overwhelming the host, the virus would improve it, creating a B.O.W. which, unlike those created by the unpredictable and necrotizing T-virus, would be capable of reproducing and breeding true. While the T-virus relied of a roll of the dice, rare and random genetic quirks for success, his G-virus could make a B.O.W. of anything.

Anything.

It was just necessary to have a set of potential hosts for the second stage that were genetically similar to the primary host. In theory related organisms would be best, siblings ideally, though he supposed that parents and offspring would be close enough to work.

He’d had a set of carefully line-bred rats ready and waiting for the final test, the one he’d never get the chance to run now. So much for proof of concept.

But someone had been betting on it being successful, even without the final test being run.

They’d been sure enough to kill him for it.

Except he wasn’t dead yet, was he?

No, of course not. Death would be determined by a cession of thought, of pain, both of which continued with no trace of fading.

The pain most assuredly remained.

Except it was changing, slithering, moving, twitching, pulsing.

All from around the injection site rather than the gunshot wounds.

Pain on pain on pain it was hard to tell, but it no longer seemed to be coming from where he’d been shot.

And was the pinpoint expanding?

A keyhole that he could peer through and perceive shape and shadow? Movement?

Yes, there was movement.

Around him?

Had Annette returned? Could he find the words to tell her what he’d done, what she needed to do?

No, not around him.

Well, technically not around him.

Somehow, against all logic, he was standing. Swaying, unsteady on his feet, but standing.

From pinhole to keyhole to porthole he could see.

The world was blurry and gray and missing chunks, but he could see.

And walk, slow and unsteady, leaning against a desk, a chair, the wall until he was in the hall.

The G-virus was doing its work. It meant he only had a small amount of time to act before it overwhelmed him. He had to find the men who had attacked him before they found Annette.

Before Annette found him.

What the G-virus created was sure to be aggressive and he wasn’t sure if it was him that was in control.

He could hear them not too far down the hall, turned around in the labyrinthine halls of the facility. When he was younger, had first started working for Umbrella there had been countless times he’d gotten lost, had to call Albert for help on the PA system. It had been a joke between the two of them that it would cut down on wasted time if one of them were to be fitted with a tracking device so that the other would always be able to find them.

An old joke.

Albert was dead now.

Had vanished during the mansion incident, killed by an unlucky roll of the dice.

The virus he’d made for Albert clearly hadn’t worked, otherwise he would have contacted him by now with the good news. An eighty percent chance of success just hadn’t been enough for Albert.

It went to show, there was no such thing as a safe bet.

Just like the way parents counted on seeing their children growing up, that later on time would give them the chance to catch up on all the time they’d already missed.

Like mercenaries and murderers counted on the men they’d left for dead to stay dead.

They panicked.

Bullets tore into him and he once again reassessed his hypothesis of pain thresholds.

The bullets hurt, but not like the first time.

Was it because what the virus was doing to him hurt more or because the virus was discarding unnecessary nerves?

Pain wouldn’t help it in its goal of procreation and in that it benefitted him as well. Pain would gotten in his was. His goal was to keep Annette safe so that she could take Sherry away to safety.

Sherry.

Someday she’d understand.

He was doing it for her.

Annette would explain to her and he hoped that Sherry would understand that he’d meant to be a better father.

He’d done what he could, but it hadn’t been enough. He realized that now. There was so much more he could have done.

So many days he could have taken off from work, so many long hours he could have cut short to be there with her. At least one more Christmas where he could have found a reason not to take his work home, let reading over notes distract him from what was going on around him.

Birthdays he hadn’t needed to miss.

Sherry had been growing up without him and would continue to do so.

Thwarted ambitions of being a better father, a better husband.

And on the subject of such thwarted ambitions, the virus recognized them as well.

Watching his own actions from a distance he tore into his murderers, watching as the virus struggled to accomplish what it was not yet capable of. The mutations had not yet progressed far enough. It was not yet out of the adaptive stage, on the verge of the reproductive stage, but lacking the means.

Not that it would do any good. The men were too dissimilar to be anything other than failures. If the virus had possessed the means it would only be partial, creating more primary stage G-organisms. That was the beauty of the G-virus, it would find a way. The newly infected organisms would also seek out suitable hosts, a built-in failsafe

The plan had been to use dogs to create the final version because, in theory, the second stage G-organisms would reflect the temperament of the organism used to create them. Beagles for the first test, cheap, easy to get, common lab animals. His plan had been to purchase them as sets of siblings. Infect one pup in a litter and let it infect its siblings. They would become proper, useable organisms and would likely breed true with nonrelated secondary stage G-organisms of the same original host species.

That was how it was supposed to work, but he’d never gotten to that stage of testing, never would.

Albert had taught him the notion of misappropriation of laboratory resources, a lesson he’d planned to make use of with the beagles.

Tell Sherry that he was going to get her a pet, a kitten.

And then bring home the beagle.

Another little joke. Annette insisted that Sherry not know what the two of them did. After watching that one movie Sherry had asked him if he did that sort of thing, making animals into different animals.

So it became a joke that he and Annette worked to make cats into dogs, a safe sanitary of skirting the truth.

He’d never get to see Annette or Sherry again, but that was probably for the best.

While killing the mercenaries he’d gotten a look at his hands.

The G-virus was unstable, its goal reproduction.

It didn’t care about what it did to the host in the process.

He hadn’t expected it to be that bad.

It made the T-virus look positively elegant.

The pain was throbbing, pounding, bursting.

And then relief of all things.

The pain lingered, but it had once again changed.

The more things changed the more they stayed the same.

He was lost, something he hadn’t been in years, the only difference was that he couldn’t call Albert for help.

Why would he even care to find a way out though? It wasn’t as though anything could be done for him now. The G-virus would continue to mutate, subsume him until there was nothing left and then slowly destabilize until it reached a state that was incompatible with life.

So even if the mercenaries had gotten away he would have had the last laugh.

Whoever had hired them wouldn’t know about that aspect of the G-virus, that the initial host didn’t last indefinitely and that it wasn’t supposed to. He hadn’t told anyone about the secondary stage, hadn’t wanted to for fear that his research would be taken from him.

Those fears had been justified.

So he’d been right. He would be dead soon, but he was right and there was some consolation to be found in that.

He’d protected Annette.

He’d protected Sherry.

Now he could die.

Eventually.

Without ever seeing either of them again.

They’d understand.

Annette would return, find him missing, see the discarded syringe and extrapolate from there.

She would return home, take Sherry to safety and eventually, when she was older, would explain, if not what had happened to him, why he’d done what he’d done.

To save her.

To be a good father at the last possible moment.

Sherry wouldn’t know any of the suffering, the horror of his last moments, just that he’d done everything he could for her. It wouldn’t be enough to make up for everything he’d missed, but it was something.

Safe at home, all alone, waiting for him, Sherry would never know.

Alone.

He had stayed late at work, kept Annette with him.

He wasn’t supposed to be in the labs at this hour.

Since Albert’s death he’d been keeping increasingly strange hours, getting progressively more difficult to find in his rush to finish his work before it was too late.

Albert’s death had been like the start of an unseen timer, counting down to an end, one that he’d finally reached.

They’d been lucky to find him at the lab.

Or had they?

Was there such a thing as luck?

Not for Albert and certainly not for him.

Why would it be any different for the men that had been sent to steal his work, to kill him?

They would certainly hedge their bets.

If they hadn’t found him at work they would have come for him at home, tie up loose ends.

Tie up loose ends.

Why assume that there was only one group of them?

If the goal was to kill him, which it likely was, making the G-virus more valuable by ensuring that the samples they had were the only extant specimens they might not have expected to find him in the labs. The ones that had found him had certainly been caught off guard. Twice.

Without _his_ knowledge of the final stages of the project the samples were useless, but that had been _him_ protecting _his_ work. _They_ didn’t know that.

They also had no way of knowing where to find him.

They could have come for him at home, where he would have had no way of stopping them, of protecting Sherry.

They would have killed them all.

They might still come to his home.

When the team that had gone after him in the labs didn’t report back they might look for him elsewhere.

They might already be looking for him.

They might be at his home.

Sherry.

He might have still failed to protect her.

No!

There might still be time.

He had to make it home to her.

To protect her.

Because he’d already failed so badly at that.

The virus was spreading, growing, taking over more and more of him, but it was taking the pain with it.

As there was less and less of him there was less and less that could feel.

But he could still think.

Of Sherry.

He had to find her.

There was a sense of desperation to that thought.

A last chance for him to do the right thing.

Soon there would be nothing left of him, he was sure of that. What time he had, borrowed at this point, was already running out.

He’d done his best.

Not enough.

Never enough.

He could have done so much more.

For Sherry.

Had to keep her safe.

Find her.

Sherry.

The resultant organism would seek out a suitable host for the adapted strain.

The initial host would reach a state incompatible with like and die.

He would die.

He was dying.

Movement.

Find it.

Keep them from finding Annette.

From getting to Sherry.

Had to find her first.

Make sure she was safe.

Sherry.

That was what mattered.

All that mattered.

Sherry.


End file.
